“…The most important topic on earth: world peace (…) I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time (…) Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace– based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions–on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements, which  are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace, no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation (…) For peace is a process – a way of solving problems.”

President John F. Kennedy, Washington, D.C., 10 June 1963

As President Kennedy stated in his famous speech cited above, no nation is able to impose peace, no matter how strong it is. Peace must instead be the product of many nations (without, however, sidelining direct concerned actors). Could we enter a new era of conscious compassionate multilateralism? Maybe it is too early to speak of sustainable multilateralism until the main international actors reach a cognitive and political awareness, and can “digest” this multipolar world in which we all live. A world as it is now, and not as it should be, or could have been.

An important metacognitive function humans have is that of decentring. This is the ability of human beings to assess interactive sequences and to assume (and remember) someone else’s point of view in the relational context (Aquilar & Galluccio, 2008, 2009; Falcone, Marraffa, Carcione, 2003; Di Maggio, Semerari, Carcione, Nicolo’, Procacci, 2007). Understanding others’ values and opinions and mental states as a whole, gives leaders a strategic advantage. Everybody from the bottom to the top of the pyramid of power should be engaged in interpersonal negotiations to achieve a common ground from where to negotiate and mediate, with respect, mutual interests. No more one-way negotiation but a mix of intrapersonal and interpersonal negotiations. The world is interdependent and we need to be able to manage the interdependence through peace negotiations, with political and psychological strategies, in strengthening international cooperation to solve common problems. Alliances’ capacity building is more important in this historical period than ever before and we think that international negotiations should also help to build up sustainable working relationships. The way political leaders, negotiators, and mediators will manage these relationships is of great importance in order to foster international comprehensive cooperation and common problem-solving attitudes and behaviors. Otherwise, peace will continue to lose precisely its most important operational modality: that of solving problems. In the world there are still too many people suffering or dying for causes that are easily treatable or through violent conflicts. In time of crisis procedures are important and useful but not enough to handle complex situations. Procedural thinking style is good for a well ordered world. In time of crisis complexity is increased and we need complex mental tools to adapt our decision-making processes to the real world. We need to relate on our tacit knowledge and experience. We need leaders with a comprehensive vision of the future. Ending conflicts is just one of the moral imperatives to be achieved through international global negotiations. But, until we help to resolve problems around the globe, we will continue to be selectively and morally disengaged from the real world in which we all live.

[1]Revised excerpt from Galluccio (2011), in Aquilar, Galluccio (Eds.) (2011), Psychological and Political Strategies for Peace Negotiations. New York: Springer.

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Mauro Galluccio, PhD

Our mission and current researches and studies foresee the development of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of political and diplomatic sciences and International Relations, and specifically to the study of interpersonal negotiations, as the main mechanism for preventing, managing, solving, and transforming conflicts. We are concentrated on knowing more about how to really master interacting cognitive and emotional processes to shape judgments and adaptive decisions in providing “operational connections” between different disciplines.

Everybody agrees that peace processes cannot be nurtured by force. They can be better achieved by a process of mutual understanding. It was Gian Battista Vico who said: “For when man understands, he extends his mind to comprehend things; but when he does not understand, he makes them out of himself, and by transforming himself, becomes them”  (Vico, 1744; 2000:160). Unfortunately, the world today is more complex and difficult to understand.  We, therefore, need complex mental tools to face these realities. The challenges to peace that lie ahead of us have been, in some cases, unresolved from many decades. The world is geopolitically fragmented and the “division” of the great powers’ areas of influence is an “ordered memory” of the past. It is difficult to think globally while facing challenges at a micro level capable of influencing the macro level, including regional disorders that do not display clear “situated” enemies and targets. This “confused” situation is reinforced by a modern paradox: an exponential and incontrollable growth of political technical communication tools that have been developing at the expense and detriment of a human communication and in general of a correct information flux around the world. As a result, we often seem to be caught by surprise by the way that events unfold, as well as their speed. Unfortunately, international actors seem to display a lack, or rigidity of leadership. We are witnessing difficulties to master and shape international events through this “mysterious” political construct called global governance, where main international actors seem to have worries on negotiating the “common translation and interpretation” of it (Eco, 2003). This brings discordant and asymmetric beliefs and behaviours on how to structure international Institutions, to set up mechanisms to handle the complexity of political relations, to give stability to working relationships, and to facilitate negotiating processes in order to “regulate” common international interests among states and other international actors.

The psychological social cognitive approach we use in our theoretical framework (Aquilar & Galluccio, 2008), in partnership with distinguished personalities from other disciplines, could help in widening, and improving, through specific validated training programs, the understanding of negotiating beliefs and relational abilities of negotiators. It is not easy to face conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity, and it could be a strategic advantage to helping to reduce the risks of negotiation failure due to psychological characteristics of actors that could thwart negotiators’ interactions in related contextual situations. Even most enduring alliances in the field of international relations are under strain because of events and policies (sometimes absence or lack of cooperation) and tools deployed to face them. Thinking is understood to be an embodied process: we know things not just through our heads, but also through our actions, and our bodily-felt experience. Thinking, feeling, and acting are embodied, and all essays to understand behaviours and decision-making processes without taking into account cognitive, metacognitive, emotional, motivational, and behavioural processes of actors could be deemed to fail in the international arena, as well in all other contexts. This should be considered as a main political priority to be pursued in this century in the field of international relations if we want to improve the well-being of populations around the globe adapting our decision making processes to contextual complex situations.

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